“Not just the money,” the guy said. “The clothes too.” His eyes moved to Giovanna, roaming up and down like a visual tongue. “And we’ll want your whore for a while. Maybe we’ll give her back.”
Frank discovered that an old hackneyed expression was actually true. A red mist appear in front of his eyes. The fury was so intense that he couldn’t make himself do anything. Like in a bad dream—
And then Giovanna ended the moment. Her intake of breath was quick, and sharp. The scream that came back out was high, piercing and incredibly loud.
The sound broke Frank’s paralysis—at the same time that it held the thug in front of him momentarily frozen.
There was no thought at all involved. Just the immediate lightning reaction of a nineteen-year-old in very good health who was also—false modesty aside—one hell of a good soccer player. Frank’s kick to the crotch didn’t double up the goon. It lifted him about a foot off the ground; and, when he landed, he was curled up like a spider caught in a flame.
Unfortunately, muggers have good reflexes too. Vaguely, Frank realized that shutters and doors along the alley were beginning to bang open, letting light into the alleyway. But his attention was on the thug next to the one he’d kicked, who was already swinging his knife.
Frank managed to avoid the first stab by just backing away. Giovanna’s hand yanking on his arm helped a lot too. Frantically, he grabbed Giovanna and pushed her into a doorway, which was the best he could do to get her out of danger. When he turned back, the same thug was coming in for another stab.
Frank had no training at all in the martial arts. Luckily for him, some things are just automatic reflex—and blocking an awkward looping stab with a forearm is one of them. The thug’s snarling face was now less than a foot away from Frank’s own.
Again, soccer substituted for kung-fu, and Frank had one hell of a head-butt. The goon staggered back, dazed, blood pouring down his face. Frank was pretty sure he’d broken his nose.
He backed up again, protecting Giovanna in the doorway as best he could, his eyes ranging, looking for the two other muggers. Giovanna’s lungs were as impressive as her bust. Coming from just inches behind, her second scream almost blew out his eardrums.
But it was all over. Those opening doorways were open, now, and people were spilling out of them. Among those people—right in the fore—were Marcolis. Marcoli males. Many Marcoli males.
And they were looking even meaner and angrier than they had in Frank’s nightmare reverie. Oh, lots meaner and lots angrier.
The muggers hesitated, and that was their undoing. None of them got more than a few steps before they were brought down.
Shortly thereafter, Giovanna hugging him tightly—boy, did that feel great—Frank was able to observe an interesting tableau.
Antonio Marcoli was at the center of it, standing in front of four would-be muggers held by what seemed like eight pair of none-too-gentle hands apiece. Well. In the case of the one Frank had kicked, “held up” was probably a more accurate description than “held.” The guy was still curled into a ball. Even with Antonio’s cousin holding him by the hair, his head wasn’t more than waist-high.
You couldn’t actually say that Marcoli was swaggering or strutting. But that was only because “swaggering” and “strutting” were words that had a slightly comical connotation to them, and there was nothing at all comical—oh, no, no, no, no, no—about Antonio Marcoli’s body language.
Frank found himself titling the tableau like a picture. Street-life, with lynch-mob. A moment of murmured reassurance that his daughter was unharmed, and then Marcoli had taken charge. By then, all the Marcolis had plenty of neighbors and friends to lend them a hand. Not that they probably needed it. Truth to tell, the Marcolis looked right at home in a dark alley. Natural denizens.
And Messer Marcoli suddenly wasn’t the screwball radical he’d been in daylight, either. The guy looked about as comic opera as a rattlesnake. He had a thin smile on his face, which contained no humor at all.